Exterior doors often include seals to provide a substantially air tight and weatherproof barrier when the door is closed. There are generally two types of sealing apparatus, fixed and lifting, mounted at the bottom of a door. The fixed sealing strip maintains contact with the ground when opening/closing the door, and thus increases the resistance for the door, and affects how well the door closer operates. This fixed sealing strip is easily damaged. The lifting sealing apparatus is more complex. When the door opens, a sealing strip lifts off the threshold; when the door is closed to a predetermined position, the sealing strip descends to the threshold for sealing engagement, with a lifting seal, the resistance for opening/closing the door is decreased, thus facilitating the operation of the door closer.
The lifting type sealing apparatus is usually equipped with a press mechanism which is mounted adjacent to the door hinge. When the door is closed, the door frame actuates the press mechanism, whereby a transmission mechanism is driven to descend the sealing strip. This lifting type sealing apparatus lifts and descends easily. However, there still has a drawback that the sealing strip may contact the ground even if the door has not yet been closed completely, thus causing the sealing strip to drag on the ground along a distance, and preventing the door from closing completely, so that the latch bolt of the door lock cannot be inserted in the door frame buckle entirely.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a self-lifting sealing apparatus to solve the above-described problems, so that the sealing strip descends when the door is closed, and which eliminates or minimizes the possibility of the sealing strip dragging on the ground.
Accordingly, a primary objective of the present invention is the provision of an improved self-lifting sealing apparatus for the bottom edge of a door.
Another objective of the present invention is the provision of a self-lifting door weather stripping seal which overcomes the problems of the prior art.
A further objective of the present invention is the provision of a door seal which automatically lowers when the door is closed and automatically lifts when the door is opened.
Still another objective of the present invention is the provision of a method of sealing a gap between the lower edge of a door and a door frame threshold wherein the seal moves between a raised position when the door is opened and a lowered position when the door is closed.
Yet another objective of the present invention is the provision of an automatic door seal having an actuation mechanism opposite the door hinge.
Another objective of the present invention is the provision of a self-lifting sealing apparatus for a door which is magnetically actuated.
A further objective of the present invention is a self-lifting door seal which is economical to manufacture, automatic in operation, and durable in use.
These and other objectives will become apparent from the following description of the invention.